Li Qiang, a member of Shanghai's municipal political advisory body and a vice‑president at Tencent Group, told local media that Shanghai now holds “all‑round leading advantages” in artificial intelligence — from chips and large‑scale computing centres to data and talent — and that the city is a fertile ground for AI companies and entrepreneurs.
The remark is both promotional and strategic. Shanghai has been building a dense ecosystem of universities, corporate R&D labs and industrial parks that specialise in advanced software and systems engineering. Local government policies have leaned heavily towards talent attraction and subsidies for technology startups, while private players — domestic and foreign — have expanded cloud, data‑centre and AI research capacities in and around the city.
Why Shanghai matters goes beyond municipal boosterism. Beijing and Shenzhen frequently dominate headlines about China’s tech ambitions, but Shanghai combines capital markets, global finance links and industrial scale in ways that make it uniquely suited to commercialising AI at scale. Access to computing power, pools of engineers from Fudan and Shanghai Jiao Tong universities, and proximity to established enterprises give the city an advantage in moving from research prototypes to real‑world deployment.
The city’s strengths, however, sit against structural constraints. China’s chip industry still depends on complex global supply chains and faces export restrictions that can slow progress in semiconductor manufacturing. Data governance, energy costs for large compute clusters, and tighter regulatory oversight of algorithms and platform companies are additional hurdles. Nevertheless, Shanghai’s combination of policy support, talent and capital means it will remain a central theatre in the broader US‑China contest over advanced AI capabilities and applications.